In addition to a main residence, modern times provide people and families with vacation homes that are geographically remote from the regular places of residence. Also, owners of businesses generally have their place of business remote from their residence. These structures tend to be affected by changes in environmental characteristics, either natural (i.e., weather conditions), or non-natural (i.e., vandalism, break-ins, etc.). Generally, a thermostat monitors the ambient temperature and regulates a heating/cooling appliance to keep the building within the predefined temperature range thereby accomplishing the typical environmental control. The typical thermostat only monitors the ambient temperatures. Where the building is in a volatile climatic region, it is not always feasible to maintain the full functions of the appliances year round. For example, a building located in a region known for very warm temperatures, if the owner resides several hundred miles away, there would be no need to activate a cooling system on an abnormally warm day during a virtually cool season. There is no system found that monitors the ambient environmental factors within a predefined range of values, upon an exception to the predefined values, alerts the remotely located owner, and allows the owner to remotely redefine the acceptable environmental parameters. Thus a remote control system solving the aforementioned problem, as well as several others, is desired.
The home control industry is a rapidly growing, multi-billion dollar industry. This growth has been accompanied by the recent development of smart appliances and efforts to development a universal protocol for home control by major companies. The present invention provides the next major development in today's home control industry, ubiquitous connectivity and control of structure environment.
The home control industry has taken steps toward ubiquitous connectivity and control over the years, but these steps have fallen short until now. The home control industry has moved from ultrasonic remote control to infrared remote control to local RF remote control and on to land-line phone home-away-from-home remote control. The advent of improved cell phone technology provided more mobility and convenience to home-away-from-home control. High-speed and wireless Internet access has allowed connectivity to the home through home-based and wireless laptop computers. While an advance in connectivity, mobile Internet connectivity, like its predecessors, is not without significant challenges, especially with mobility and convenience.
The invention of the microcontroller and microcomputer has spawned a robust industry in home automation. An endless number of systems has been created by hobbyist, commercial, and industrial developers. Processes and devices for which automation has been pioneered include audio systems, video systems, security and surveillance systems, lighting systems, watering and irrigation systems, systems for measurement of vital statistics for medical patients, and garage door openers, to name a few. The typical control architecture includes a transmitter and a receiver in which a command is issued by the transmitter and is executed in response by the receiver. Communications links have used radio frequency, infrared, and ultrasonic technologies.
Other technologies used for home automation include power line carrier and telephone line. Power line carrier and telephone line systems both have the benefit of being able to use existing facility wiring for communications. Each has its own benefits and detriments. Power line systems operate on existing building electrical wiring while telephone line systems use existing telephone wiring. Electrical wiring is usually available in more locations within a building than is telephone wiring. Telephone line systems are generally more secure.
By far the most popular and ubiquitous power line carrier system is the X10. This system use transmitter, receiver, and controller modules connected to the building wiring, usually by plugging directly into an electrical outlet. Each module is individually addressed by a companion module, which is responsive to commands issued or received that are encoded with a preset digital address. The X10 system, like most power line carrier technologies, is characteristically confined to operation within a very limited area, such as within a single building. Newer interfaces have been developed to allow control of a broad range of external communications systems with X10 systems.
The need to expand the geographic range of control for a limited system, such as power line carrier, radio frequency, or infrared, led to the development of telephone interfaces, including voice, DTMF, and Caller ID. While such systems allow users to exercise control of their facilities remotely, they are not as user friendly and often use tones or cryptic, hard-to-understand, digitized voice prompts. Often a long distance call from a pay telephone was required to access the controller, which had to be interfaced with the facility telephone network.
The availability of personal computers, the Internet, and broadband networks has fueled the explosion in the number of home automation methods and devices. Controlling software is available for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and DOS based computers. Every imaginable type of input-output port has been used to communicate data into and out of a computer. Examples of available interfaces usable for home automation and control purposes include USB, parallel port, joystick, serial (RS-232, RS-422, RS-485 and the like), audio, ActiveX, and TCP/IP. Bidirectional communications have become more prevalent, allowing a remote operator to not only control but also to observe and monitor the tasks performed by the automation system. Internet-based utilities allow control and monitoring of systems from any computer anywhere in the world.
One of the most relevant entries into the home automation universe is the cellular telephone. In their most basic mode, cell phones can be used to control the same systems accessible by conventional telephones through the dial-up POTS network. A more advanced method involves the use of the cell phone network's short message service (“SMS”) in which text messages are sent to and received from a controlled system. SMS messages travel on the same cellular network (on the same physical layer) as standard voice calls but on a different logical channel.